


life is infinitely inventive

by thespottedowl



Series: BBS drabbles [8]
Category: Banana Bus Squad
Genre: (brief mention), Alternate Universe - Wings, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Animal Death, Evan still has wings, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Tenderness, YouTube
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:22:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23829043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thespottedowl/pseuds/thespottedowl
Summary: Anthony's tired. It's not uncommon for him. After all, he and his boyfriend work a job that demands weird hours, and many hours at that. It's gotten better for them since they moved in together, since they're better at taking care of the other than themselves, but exhaustion is not a foreign concept to them.This is something deeper than exhaustion. He's... fatigued, or something similar.Whatever. He's not fuckin' Shakespeare. Goddamn wordsmith.[part two of the 'vanoss has wings so that's p cool' series]
Relationships: Anthony | BigJigglyPanda/Evan Fong
Series: BBS drabbles [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/748089
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	life is infinitely inventive

**Author's Note:**

  * For [beesucculent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beesucculent/gifts).



> I'm trying to clean out a lot of old drafts in my notes rn. sorry for the spam, but I love this au a lot and I wanted more soft jiggly fics!!
> 
> title from the kitten by mary oliver

Anthony's tired. It's not uncommon for him. After all, he and his boyfriend work a job that demands weird hours, and many hours at that. It's gotten better for them since they moved in together, since they're better at taking care of the other than themselves, but exhaustion is not a foreign concept to them.

This is something deeper than exhaustion. He's... fatigued, or something similar. 

Whatever. He's not fuckin' Shakespeare. Goddamn wordsmith. 

But this tired runs bone-deep. It's getting hard to make it out of bed before two PM, and he's missed a few gaming sessions that his friends had intended to include him in.

Anthony can tell that Evan's worried about him, too. He's fidgety, and gets uncomfortable easily if Anthony's not in the same room as him. Anthony's taken to falling asleep in between his legs, head resting against one of his knees, to stop Evan from interrupting himself constantly to check on him. It hurts his back, but at least it stops their friends from teasing them because Evan ducked out of a session for the fourth time. 

Evan's a whole 'nother can of worms, no bird puns intended. His sleep schedule is jacked even worse than Anthony's is; in one of his worst cycles, he slept til five PM one day and then stayed up for two days straight. It's worrying Anthony too, but he doesn't have the energy to protest too heavily. Still, it leaves a bad taste in his mouth when he wakes up to an empty bed.

But what is Anthony gonna say to him, really, when he's sleeping 20 hours a day himself? 

So he doesn't say anything. But he's curious where Evan's getting all this energy from. The man's rearranged the furniture in the living room every day for the past few days, pushing the chairs up to meet the couch in several different ways. He's been shopping really frequently, more often than their normal twice-a-week routine, and always seems to come home with a new blanket. It doesn't bother Anthony until Evan starts taking the blankets from their bed; that one kinda pisses him off, considering just how much time he's been spending there recently.

But again, what is Anthony gonna say to him? It's not damaging, this newfound love of soft things, and they haven't seen each other an awful lot in the past few weeks. Any time spent together is spent in the kitchen waiting for a pre-made meal to reheat. Evan's been wearing a lot of backless shirts at home, and it makes Anthony warm inside when he sees him. Evan's wings seem to have some senses outside of his control, because the feathers curl towards Jiggly whenever he's in the room. It makes Anthony cheer up a little bit to see Evan's wings stretch towards him, even if the man himself is entirely focused on editing or recording.

So Anthony leans into his side when they sit in the kitchen together, and rests his feet in his lap when they're working on editing together, and falls asleep against his legs when he inevitably gets too tired to trek back to their bed. For a little while, they make it work. Neither of them are bringing in as much from ad sense as they normally would be, and it means they have to be really careful with their editing because of it. Which is hard, because they're both exhausted and out of it, and- it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It's hard, but they lean on each other as much as they can. Then they fight. 

Not only is it the first fight they'd had in a while, it's the first one that they've had as a couple. It's scary. Anthony's kind of relieved that it's finally happened, but at the same time, he's so fucking angry at Evan. The goddamned hypocrite, Mr. Hasn't-Seen-A-Doctor-Since-He-Was-Six, is insisting that Jiggly needs to go get checked out. Anthony's started scratching his skin up recently, especially in his sleep. It's getting bad, like bloody sheets kind of bad. And he’s sleeping absurd amounts. 

And maybe Evan's right, but Anthony's scared. A general feeling of wrongness generally doesn't have a high life expectancy.

So he does, and it makes him feel a little vindicated when his GP can't find anything too terribly wrong with him. He takes home a few scrips for future tests, and is informed that blood test results will come back within the next week, and leaves vaguely unsatisfied. 

Anthony sits in the car, head against the headrest and staring at the ceiling. He and Evan are managing, but it's not clear to either of them how much longer they can "manage" for before one of them blows up. Things are getting weirder, both between and around them. Evan keeps starting sentences and cutting himself off with strange looks on his face, and Anthony's got no idea what's going on in his head. They're getting into petty fights too, especially about where they keep putting each other's things. Several of their sweaters and jackets have disappeared over the last week, and when you add to that the fact that Evan has rearranged the furniture in every room at least once, they're both having issues with boundaries and are sniping at each other about it.

Anthony's trooping back inside from his car, yawning into the back of his hand and intent on walking right up the stairs to bed. He stops by the front door, and as he pushes the door open, grabs the mail from the box on the wall of the porch. It takes him a second to process, and he's almost got his foot in the door when he realises that the thing on top of the mail, the thing he just grabbed, with his formerly clean hands, is not, in fact, the smooth paper that he was expecting his mail to be. Instead, he has just grabbed, with his full hand, a very furry, very dead rat.

Anthony screeches and drops the mail, which scatters everywhere. The rat itself bounces down the front steps and lies there, taunting Anthony with blank eyes and tiny needle teeth. If he had to guess, he would say it's been killed by some kind of bird. Its only wounds seems to be two sets of punctures, one by its lower hips and one through its tiny chest. It takes another minute to fully process for Anthony, and the screen door tries to close on him. Dazed, he moves into the house slowly, staring at the mess of mail. Not that it was terribly scary, but certainly traumatising to pick up a dead rodent when you just want to get the mail and go to bed.

Evan chooses then to come thundering down the stairs. "Anthony?" he calls urgently, swinging around the corner of the staircase. "Are you alright?" He looks between the scattered mail outside and Jiggly's stunned face. "What happened?"

"There was a rat or something in the mailbox," Anthony tries to explain. "I don't- not living," he amends hastily, seeing Evan's face. 

"Where is it now?" Evan asks. He steps outside to check for himself. Anthony's not quite sure how to interpret the series of expressions that flicker over Evan's face when he sees the thing. He was expecting disgust, maybe, at most sorrow for the death of another living thing. But for a second, Evan almost looks... hurt.

Anthony tries very hard not to overthink it as he washes his hands and puts himself to bed. He would've kept thinking not very hard about it if it hadn't started to happen with some frequency.

They call an exterminator after the third rat. At this point they've started showing up inside the house. Voles are next, and then, in an event that makes them call animal control, the mangled mess of what may have once been a bunny, sitting on their back porch. Anthony presses his eyes shut and tries to go back to not thinking about it. 

The blood test comes back completely normal, which is frustrating only in that it provides no answers. He's gone in for an ultrasound, a CT scan, and an MRI, none of which found anything unusual, except that maybe he should slow down on the drinking a little. Anthony is fully resorting to spoon theory at this point, expending all his extra energy on getting any videos put out at all. He's lucky if he gets two showers a week.

So Anthony's almost entirely out of commission. Evan's panicking over him, like, a lot, and Anthony thinks privately that he would be too if he had that much energy to blow. Evan's still working like a madman, keeping the weirdest hours Anthony's ever seen from him. 

Jiggly's just not sure if this is sustainable. Strike that. He knows it's not. He's just not sure how long they can sustain it for. 

It's a week after the bunny incident, and Jiggly's shuffling downstairs to scrounge up some food. He's got a fever high as the moon, and his vision is swimming with stars from a sinus headache that's been building since two days ago, so he's already feeling peachy as he slouches into the living room, armed with a match, to find the anti-congestion candle. It's one of those Vick's things that smells like chemicals but you can't smell anyway because you're so clogged up. He's feverish and delirious. 

It takes him four tries to get the match lit, and he fumbles the candle trying to hold it sideways and get the burning match into it. Just when he thinks the wick is lit, he feels the heat from the match on the tips of his fingers. It touches his hand- 

Almost immediately his entire body is engulfed in fire. He screams, dropping the candle and stumbling backwards. His back hits the wall, and he tries to think. Stop, drop, and roll, right? He tries to get on the ground, vision hazy with orange and purple flames licking up his body. 

The hardwood floor is solid on his joints, and he rolls back and forth a few times. He's sucking in air desperately, and his vision is fading to black. Vaguely, facedown on their living room floor, Anthony sees Evan run into the room. He can’t process it, he’s still screaming, encased in fire and fear-

He closes his eyes.

—

Evan's panicking. 

That seems like a fair reaction, alright? He just watched his boyfriend burn to death. 

At least... that's what he thinks happened. He's pretty sure humans aren't supposed to burn that fast. Anthony's body had almost... dissolved into ash more than anything. 

Evan had to leave the room. He's crying a little, heaving in breath more than anything, and he's having trouble controlling his wings, which are beating hard, massive strokes through the air. He's not sure if it's just a reaction to panic, but he was terrified of the disturbed air scattering Anthony's ashes. 

So now he's standing in their recording room, pacing, with his hand clamped down over his mouth to stop the sobs from escaping. What does he do with this kind of thing? Of all the relationship scenarios he's been prepared for, this is certainly not one of them.

Okay. Okay okay okay.

Evan tries to think rationally. His boyfriend just burned to death on their living room floor. Cut him a little slack for not succeeding. He forces himself to walk downstairs, find a broom, and sweep the ashes into a pile. 

(He's trying his hardest not to think of them as Anthony's ashes.) 

(He fails.) 

Evan had intended to sweep up the ashes and then call the police, but he abandons the plan halfway through. It bowls him over again, a minute into sweeping, that he watched his boyfriend burn in their living room, and he drops the dustpan back to the floor, leans the broom against the TV cabinet, and drops heavily onto the couch, head in his hands. He chokes on a sob, and his wings flutter restlessly behind him as he cries.

When he finally collects himself enough to dry the tears from off his cheeks, he wanders back over to the dustpan. The ashes, which he had collected into a small pile in the pan, are scattered across the floor again. 

Huh. 

Evan decides maybe he'll leave them alone for another day or two. Silently, he promises that if nothing happens by the third day, he really will call the police.

The second day dawns cold and windy. Evan's buried himself in editing, but his motivation is strangely absent. Normally it's easy for him to lose himself in work. Today, his wings droop wearily behind him, and he keeps losing his focus, staring at the wall behind his computer. Some part of him knows that he's grieving, but he's struggling to wrap his head around it. Something buried deep in his feels like it's... dried up, almost. Withered.

He pokes his head into the living room, heart in his throat. Anthony's not laying on the floor, as he had hoped, but the ashes aren't in the same place he had left them, either. They've almost spread, taking the vague shape of a human silhouette. 

It's the third morning, and Evan stays in bed until noon, hoping beyond hope that Anthony will come ambling up the stairs to kiss him silly and pet his wings. No one ever does, and Evan is wondering to himself whether this is some elevated form of denial. He shambles downstairs slowly, and stands in the kitchen for a long time, staring at the singular cup of coffee sitting in the machine, steam curling up out of the cup. He sips at it slowly, and wanders back into the living room, just to check one more time before he calls the police.

Anthony is laying on the floor, curled into himself, skin baby pink and hair less grey than Evan's ever seen it before. His eyes are closed, brow furrowed, and he's never looked more beautiful to Evan in his life. 

Evan almost drops his cup, but he manages to recover it, wings flapping for balance, and set it on the side table with shaking hands before he drops to his knees and Anthony's side. He blinks, looking up sleepily at the air buffeting his face, and seems confused why Evan is crying, cupping his face.

It takes a long time to explain, and longer for Anthony to even begin to believe him, but it must have helped that Evan - stoic, reserved Evan - was crying openly as he kissed Anthony.

“Phoenix,” he whispers reverently, leaning in to kiss Anthony again. “I can’t even begin to process how special you are.” Anthony grins, craning his neck to meet him halfway.


End file.
